Topic: Detachment (from matter)

The sage Chanakhya wrote, “There is no misery like attachment. There is no happiness like detachment.”
I lost my briefcase recently, and although it was a relatively insignificant loss, I felt disappointed and thought about how painful it can be to lose things we value greatly. Attachment often leads to disappointment. Either the object of our attachment doesn’t continue to satisfy us, or it...

Our Dead Son’s Body, nine inches long, lay in my hand.
For some months afterward, my natural affection—that motherly impulse hard-wired into body and mind—cried for that child.
“What you grieve for is not the child,” the midwife told me, “but how you had projected that child into your life.”
I had become attached to a desire to have a child to love and enjoy. That attachment, based on the body...